The aftermath of the "Shannon diplomatic incident," in which Yeltsin, having slept through a meeting with Irish leaders while his plane sat on the tarmac at the Shannon Airport, confronts Russian reporters back at Vnukovo-2 in Moscow.

Just five months before his death, Nobel Peace Prize-winning physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov (1921-1989) spoke out at the USSR’s First Congress of People’s Deputies, defying Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022) to advocate for a multi-party system in a speech broadcast live to millions—yet silenced within the Congress hall itself.

Published in the 13 March 1988 issue of the daily newspaper “Sovetskaia Rossiia” (Soviet Russia), this letter by chemistry lecturer and Stalinist apologist Nina Andreeva (1938-2020) sparked tens of thousands of public responses, revealing that conservative currents in the Communist Party and beyond now faced strong resistance from a glasnost-empowered public.

The political satire show "Kukly [Puppets]" mocks Anatoly Chubais, a key architect of the disastrous early-1990s Russian privatization push known as "shock therapy." From Episode 47, “Hostages,” which aired on NTV on 27 January 1996.